In these hours of bereavement Vida’s heart went out with a longing cry for her husband.  The love that she had stifled and called dead was there, deeper and purer.  Now that she had been brought by this divine mystery unto full sympathy with him, he was the one soul on earth whose love she craved.

Perverse human heart!  Here she was, no one to control her actions, possessed of wealth, youth, beauty, freedom to journey to other lands, and revel in the grand and beautiful of nature and art, yet the one only thing she desired, or that would satisfy, was to creep back into the niche she had filled in that other heart, that large, pure soul that she had thrust from her in her wicked folly and blindness.  Now she would devote her life to searching for him, if indeed he were still living, and the doubt brought a keen pang; or had he, too, thrust her out and barred the door, so that she might never more enter?  Or—­worse than death—­had he given the place to another, as she bade him do?  It was a weary search, with this terrible uncertainty shrouding it.  She advertised in mystical language, so none but he could comprehend it.  She examined the church records of the denomination with which he was connected, but found no clue there.

She attended conventions where large companies of ministers were in session, and eagerly looked them over, hoping and praying that her eyes might fall on that one that her heart asked for.  It was growing exciting and absorbing, this strange search.  She frequently visited towns where a popular preacher or lecturer was announced, and made one of the vast throng that passed about him; then, taking a favourable position, rapidly scanned the upturned faces, wondering, meanwhile, what that strange, subtle something is, by which we recognise each other; that unerring consciousness, so that among ten thousand faces, could we view them one by one, we know at a glance that the one we seek is not there; we do not stop, and doubt, and compare—­we know.

She humbled herself to the very dust, and wrote letters far and near to his ministerial friends, that brought only sorrowful replies.  And now there came a remembrance that he had often spoken of the far west as a wide and promising field for labour; that some time he should like to go there and build up a church.  He might have gone there now.  So, with this forlorn hope, she started westward; spending the summer journeying, stopping over the Sabbath at straggling villages, and visiting different churches.  Wearied out at length, she recalled the fact that an uncle had removed, with his family, to the south-west, several years before.

She searched out their whereabouts and hastened thither, intending to spend but a brief season.  But yielding to their entreaties she remained through the autumn.  It was now drawing near to Christmas, and still she lingered.  She was growing hopeless, and that pleasant home filled with boys and girls was a diversion from her grief.